How my guinea pig client changed everything

Last week I wished you remained well with the scorching heat. This week, I hope you are coping well with the rain! British weather eh! 

Onto today's newsletter.

Have you ever had the nagging feeling that you're meant to be doing something really specific with your business, but you can't quite see what it is? Like it's hiding in plain sight, just slightly out of view?

My mentor Daniel Priestley has a phrase for this: ‘you are sitting on a mountain of value’ - and the reason we can't see it is that we're standing too close to it.

Today I want to tell you the story of how I finally saw mine. Because there's a clue in it for finding yours.

The personal discovery

Back in 2021, I was coaching one of my very first clients - my friend Nikki, who kindly volunteered to be a guinea pig while I was training for my coaching qualification. Bear in mind I'd done only a handful of practice sessions at this point, with a total of one client.

In our very first session, she asked me directly: ‘As you know, I have ADHD. How can you support me with this through coaching?’ 

I took a big gulp. In my head I thought: ‘Omg, I'm barely understanding what coaching even IS - how could I possibly help this person with her own unique ADHD-related challenges?’

I told her that while my coaching wasn't ADHD-specific, I'd go away, read about it, and help her as much as I could.

And I did go away and read - extensively. I discovered this whole new world of adult ADHD, and particularly ADHD in adult women, who are wildly under-diagnosed. I'll confess that even as a doctor, my understanding was limited. At medical school we were taught that ADHD mostly happened to little boys (this was 2002-2008 - education has thankfully improved since). Adult ADHD was never even on my radar.

But as I delved deeper, and kept coaching Nikki, I started noticing something that really caught my attention. The way she described her experiences - the way she thought, processed, behaved - sounded all too familiar. It dawned on me that she was describing my own brain.

Wow.

I tried to ignore it initially. But as we kept working together, as well as noticing even more familiar patterns, I noticed something else: I seemed to have this knack for helping her unlock months of procrastination and overwhelm with what felt like simple, obvious observations. She was blown away by her progress. But if I’m completely honest, apart from listening and reflecting back what she said, I couldn't have told you exactly what I'd done to help her so much.

She left me a wonderful Google testimonial, which I'll screenshot below in case you'd like to read it.

Coaching Nikki changed the course of my personal and professional life.

On a personal level, it sent me down the road of getting informed, formally assessed, and eventually diagnosed with ADHD at 41 (anyone who's been through it knows it's a journey - one that can take years). 

Professionally, that awareness opened the floodgates to what later changed the course of my business. 
 

The professional discovery

Without ever promoting it, or even mentioning it, I kept attracting a disproportionate number of ADHD clients over the years. And I've loved it. I just GET ADHD brains - the way they think, the things that only make sense to those of us wired this way.

Then, recently, my wonderful client Emilie - an incredibly intelligent founder with ADHD, sent me a message that stopped me in my tracks:

‘Please keep leaning into the ADHD founders niche - it's where you stand out head and shoulders above other coaches.’

Coming from Emilie, who has worked with multiple coaches, and who is an ADHD founder herself, I simply couldn't ignore that. I know her well enough to know she wasn't just being kind, she was naming something real. Talk about learning from our own clients.

It's thanks to Nikki, Emilie, and to all my ADHD clients, that I gradually saw where my focus was meant to be. And it's led me here: I'm now working specifically with ADHD founders.

My approach

I've never been just about business advice or strategy. I've never been about generic ADHD coping tips. Where I've landed is the intersection of all of it - business coaching, performance coaching, ADHD coaching and lifestyle strategy - blended into one.

I’ve finally fully surfaced something I intuitively have known all along - ADHD founders are remarkable. They are capable, intelligent and creative. They don't lack ambition or motivation. So conventional productivity advice simply doesn't land. I always start with the founder - getting them well, calm, clear and regulated first - and only then do we tackle the business.

What's strange is how obvious it all feels now. Lifelong (undiagnosed) ADHD, 17+ years in medicine, rigid careers I eventually broke away from to become an entrepreneur - of course this was always my niche. But it took a rollercoaster to get here, because I was too close to my own value to see it.

So why am I telling you all this?

Because for years, I couldn't see how all my experiences, professional AND personal, stacked up into something that could genuinely help a specific group of people. The mountain was right under my feet.

If you're a founder struggling to find your most natural niche, don't just look at your professional skills. Look at the whole of you. Your origin story. Your ideas and perspectives. Your struggles, your transformations, your passions. These leave clues - and together with what you've learned professionally, they're very likely the foundations of your ideal niche.

You are standing on your own mountain of value right now.

What are your thoughts? How did you discover or develop your niche? I'd love to hear from you!

Wishing you a lovely rest of your week

Warmly,

Marcela